Open All Night, by Jeanne Wagner

Open All Night, by Kate Peper (USA) contemporary. Click on image to visit artist site.

Open All Night
  
Let’s stay out late, light’s a shrine,  
each lit storefront a refuge.
Let’s prowl the streets, 
echoes of our own after-curfew 
footsteps stalking us.
Neon is Main street’s candlelight--
photons streaming through
a slender glass tube 
like cocktails through a plastic straw.
Maybe we’ll find a tavern 
with a fake fireplace,
mirrors garish with longing.  
Everyone selling the good news 
of easy camaraderie. 
We can hear a woman’s laughter,
nervous little shrieks fluting its edges 
like the crimping on Mom’s apple pie.
Gene Kelly never danced on this street,
never sang to these lampposts, 
never sloshed on the shine 
of this sidewalk. 
This isn’t home and the heart doesn’t
ache for anyone here.
You can leave the sad stories behind,
unless they’re your own.
​
Jeanne Wagner  

Jeanne Wagner is the author of four chapbooks and three full-length collections: The Zen Piano-mover, winner of the NFSPS Poetry Prize, In the Body of Our lives, Sixteen Rivers Press and Everything Turns Into Something Else, published in 2020 as runner-up for the Grayson Books Prize. Her work has appeared in Alaska Review, Cincinnati Review, North American Review, Florida Review, and The Southern Review.